Posts Tagged ‘waste’
Latest Research
September 11, 2009Nice Speech, Wrong Month
President Obama gave a nice, thematic speech Wednesday night. But that was the speech he should have given in April or May at the latest. It is now September and four congressional committees have already completed their work. The President said there is agreement on “about 80 percent of what needs to be done …”. That is probably not true because about 80 percent of what is in the current legislation is not needed in order to achieve the three basic goals outlined in the speech.
The speech is a lesson in the difference between campaigning and governing. If the Administration were truly serious about malpractice reform and attacking waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid, there would have been more in the envelops he gave to the Vice-President and Speaker last night. To govern, he should have given actual legislative language (yes, the Executive Branch can and does draft legislation). If the Administration were serious, there would be a team from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) on Capitol Hill all day today conducting briefings on the specifics of the President’s Plan. (more…)
Tags: CBO, Department of Health and Human Services, Medicaid, Medicare, Obama Health Care Plan, waste
In the News
September 11, 2009Obama Speech Fact Check
Fact checking President Barack Obama’s health care speech, the Associated Press reports: “The president’s speech to Congress contained a variety of oversimplifications and omissions in laying out what he wants to do about health insurance.” That is an understatement. We counted no less than 15 spurious claims made by the President, including:
1. OBAMA: “There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage.”
THE FACTS: On August 8th, President Obama said: “Reform is obviously essential for the 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance.” So did 16 million uninsured people just disappear in the span of two months? Not quite. The problem is that the 46 million number was always highly misleading and the new 30 million number isn’t much better. According to an analysis based on the 2007 Census data there were 45.7 million uninsured people in the U.S. in 2007. But 9.3 million of those were non-citizens. Another 6.4 million actually are enrolled in Medicaid but mistakenly tell the Census they have no health insurance. Another 4.3 million are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP but have not signed up. Another 10 million have no insurance, but also make more than 3X the poverty level. That means only 15.6 million U.S. citizens with incomes below 300% of poverty and that are nor already eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health insurance, are uninsured.
Tags: abortion, illegal immigration, IMAC, individual mandates, Obama Health Care Plan, uninsured, waste
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